I was sure that fax machines are pretty much gone from this world (or at least I would like to hope so) but Fax Toy proves me wrong.

The front page of Fax Toy displays about 50 images of pages that people have faxed them. You can fax something interesting to 1-510-545-0990 (your boss will never notice... maybe) and it should appear there within a couple of minutes.

Let me let you in a little secret: you know how in the movies you see people jumping through a glass window or breaking a glass bottle on somebody's head? Well it turns out that those wusses in Hollywood don't use real glass!

(I also have a feeling that the blood isn't real too but I don't have any proof of that yet...)

This site explains how to make sugar glass that you too can smash on your loved ones (without going to jail afterwards).

If you decide to make your own sugar glass let me know how it comes out...(just don't try to eat it).

The most interesting are the homes of multi-billionaires like Warren Buffett who is worth $44 billion but for nearly 50 years he's been living in the same Omaha house he bought for $31,500.

Same for Ingvar Kamprad, founder and former chief executive of home furnishings giant IKEA, who drives a second-hand Volvo!

But don't worry, as expected, you can also see the "modest" houses of people like Bill Gates (who's house is worth $140 million, and this year's local tax bill came to $1.1 million), Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, and Steven Spielberg.

The whole thing started when the guys at Fog Creek needed to ship a few thousand copies of their new movie "Aardvark'D: 12 Weeks With Geeks" (excellent flick by the way) and they discovered that packing and shipping so many DVDs is much harder than they had expected (since there are many small manual tasks in order to get the package on its way).

So what does a geek like Joel do when he runs into a manual process that is long and frustrating? He builds a system to do it better, of course (and names it FogShip) .

His article describes how he setup FogShip and the different components that it contains.

This thing really makes me wish that I had lots of things to ship just so I would have an excuse to set one of these babies up (I'm sure the Fog Creekers really love shipping things now).

"The Ballmer children do not have their Xbox 360 yet. I'm in the same boat as many of you," said Microsoft Corp.'s Chief Executive Steve Ballmer. "Thanks to the wonders of Sarbanes-Oxley, management does not get a free Xbox 360," he quipped at a meeting of technology industry executives.

Under financial disclosure rules, Microsoft would have to classify a free game console as income for Ballmer.

The Music Genome Project have developed technology that can define music by it's traits (similar to how DNA defines traits in humans).

What good does that do you ask?

Well, they recently released Pandora which is an online radio player that lets you rate songs and artists that you like and then recommends songs with similar traits that you will probably also like.

You start off by entering the name of a song or artist that you like and immediately you start hearing a song with similar traits.

You can give a thumbs up or thumbs down for every song that Pandora throws at you so that the system learns what kind of music you like and becomes more and more tailored to your taste.

Pandora is an excellent way to discover new artists since the songs that you get are not necessarily from bands that you already know (although it will give you some songs from bands that you've said that you like).

The interface is pretty sleek and fun to play around with (it's basically a flash website so you don't even need to install anything) and any song that you hear in Pandora you can buy directly on iTunes or by its entire album on Amazon.

Well, I couldn't hold back after my redesign and leave the sidebar navigation the way it was, so I pulled an all-nighter (ok it was just a few hours) and updated the entire left sidebar (navigation, search, random quote...).

The update was not as simple as it seems since the other parts of the site still use the old design and since I didn't want to duplicate any code I had to resort to some PHP tricks.

Eventually I got it working the way I want (for now at least :) so I can go to sleep in peace...

It gives you the basic features that you are used to from Paint but adds many useful features (like layers and magic wand for example) that are only available in commercial photo editors like Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro.

The interface is pretty cool and it's not nearly as "heavy" as Photoshop.

And since it's free you have nothing to lose by checking it out (it's even open source code so you can be sure that there's nothing bad going on there).

This time the change is only in Guy's World and I tried to clean up some of the mess here and go for a more minimal look.

The biggest change is the post borders (that you've probably noticed by now unless you're reading this via RSS) that are a simple rounded border instead of the previous bulky frame.

I also reduced some of the colors on the page and tried to stick with the blue/orange theme.

The ads have also changed a bit mainly to match the color theme and the ads at the top are in a new format that seems much more useful.

They are now links to ad categories instead of actual ads so you get more relevant results although it takes two clicks by a user for me to get paid (one click on the ad category and a second click on the ad itself).

Hopefully the increased usefulness of the ads will make up for the extra clicks that it takes.

I'm still not fully satisfied with the way it looks (I never really am :) especially since the old navigation links at the left look like the old design but it may take me a while to update those too.

You may have noticed the new "eMiniMalls" on the main page of guymal.com.

I'm trying it out and it seems pretty cool.

The eMiniMall displays information about a product, according to criterions that I've determined (so a gardening site for example will show gardening products), and shows you best deals to get that product if you're interested.

If you click on one of the deals then, of course, I get a few pennies, very similar to the AdSense ads that you see all over the web now (and on my site :).

Here's an example of what an eMiniMall looks like:

Nice ah?

So far the AdSense ads on this site have pretty much paid the bill for hosting it and I'm hoping that this new addition will increase that, while providing a useful service for you guys.

If you want to sign up for an eMiniMall for your own site then follow this link (hey this also helps pay the bills :) :

One of the biggest problems with the iPod is that officially you can't get your songs off it (amazing ah?).

There are a few ways to get around this limitation but one of the easiest is iDump.

Forget this program's awful name (actually it's pretty cool :).

It allows you to easily transfer your songs off your iPod to a PC.

All you do is connect your iPod and run iDump and you'll have access to all your songs and even your playlists.

Just select the songs you want to transfer (you can even use your playlists to select songs) then pick a destination directory and how you would like your songs to be named. And then sit back and transfer all the selected songs to the PC.

This guy got one asking him for $2000 in order to open an offshore account and get access to a fortune of 30 million dollars. He decided to reply and drive the sender nuts.

For 9 months he kept going back and forth, telling the Nigerians that he wants to help them, send them money, have them come live with him in his Florida estate... He even tried to scam some money out of the Nigerian (and almost succeeded!).

You can read the entire email correspondence (including a few voice mail messages) on the site. Although it may be a bit long, it is totally hilarious.

Eventually he created a two person "multi-media" comedy show about the correspondence that is apparently quite successful.

If you're interested in finding out some interesting uses of Gmail then check out this article.

It'll show you how to use Gmail as a to-do list (together with filters), search through your favorite RSS feeds, use Gmail to find torrent files, use Gmail as a Notepad (actually now it can even be more like Word since they have rich-text editing capabilities), use Gmail as a spam filter, and use Gmail as storage for a photo gallery.

Just like Opera offered their browser for free for a few hours on their 10th anniversary (and since then have changed their model to make it free for everybody), today you can get DivX Create Bundle for free (it's their 5th anniversary).

The offer lasts for only a few more hours so jump on over there now (if you're into that kind of thing).

For those who don't know, Revolution is the name of the next generation Nintendo game console (that competes with the PS3 and the XBox 360) and Nintendo keeps claiming that Revolution will not be following the traditional path of a new console.

It's a cordless remote-control-like device designed to be used with only one hand. Two small sensors placed near the TV and a chip inside the controller track its position and orientation, allowing the player to manipulate the action on screen by physically moving the controller itself. For example, you could slash an in-game sword by actually swinging the controller from side to side, turn a race car just by twisting your wrist, or aim your gun in a shooter by pointing the controller where you want to fire.

It looks kinda awkward to me but according to the reviews by the people who got a chance to play around with it, it's pretty good.

I just tested out the new service from Joel Spolsky's Fog Creek, Copilot.com.

Here's what it is:

The Fog Creek Copilot service allows people to help their friends, relatives, and customers fix their computer problems by connecting to their computers via the Internet.Unlike other remote assistance services, Fog Creek Copilot is secure, easy to use, works through any home or office firewall , and requires no installation or configuration.

In one word: amazingly simple (ok, that's two words, sue me :).

In about just two minutes and 4 clicks (two for the helper and two for the helpee) you can control the other person's PC, without any configurations or them having to have any technical knowledge.

You just enter the email of the person you want to help and run a small program that you download from copilot.

The person who is being helped gets the email, clicks on the link to download a small program and that's it, you're controlling their computer!

You can try Copilot out for a two minute session for free but if you want to use it for longer you need to buy a day pass (that costs $10). I know, that's pretty expensive but they say they'll be coming out with other pricing schemes soon.

BTW: Copilot was created entirely by 4 summer interns at Fog Creek and version 1.0 took them 10 weeks to get out the door. Great job guys!

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

David Prowse, was the guy in the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars. He spoke all of Vader's lines, and didn't know that he was going to be dubbed over by James Earl Jones until he saw the screening of the movie.

The white part of your fingernail is called the lunula.

Very small clouds that look like they have been broken off of bigger clouds are called scuds.

The Boston University Bridge (on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts) is the only place in the world where a boat can sail under a train driving under a car driving under an airplane.

The infinity sign is called a lemniscate.

Hacky-sack was invented in Turkey.

The Chinese ideogram for 'trouble' symbolizes 'two women living under one roof'.

Walt Disney's autograph bears no resemblance to the famous Disney logo.

Since 1896, the beginning of the modern Olympics, only Greece and Australia have participated in every Games.

U.S. Interstates which go north-south are numbered sequentially starting from the west with odd numbers, and Interstates which go east-west are numbered sequentially starting from the south with even numbers.

The tune for the "A-B-C" song is the same as "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star."

Ralph Lauren's original name was Ralph Lifshitz.

A walla-walla scene is one where extras pretend to be talking in the background -- when they say "walla-walla" it looks like they are actually talking.

The word 'byte' is a contraction of 'by eight.'

??

I didn't know that stuff either :)

There are a LOT more things on that site that I bet you didn't know...

(if you aren't a web developer you can skip this one, it probably won't interest you...)

Aardvark will let you move your mouse over different elements of a web page and it will show you information about the element.

You can expand and contract the selection that you are currently viewing (if, for example, you have selected a table cell, pressing W will select the table row...), remove elements from the page, isolate an element, colorize elements (this one could be pretty useful), view the source of your selection, and more...

Guess the Dictator/Sit-Com Character is a game where you choose a dictator or sitcom character and the computer asks you a bunch of yes/no questions while it tries to guess who you are thinking of (very similar to 20 questions).

Some of the results are actually quite impressing, it almost always guessed who I was thinking of, sometimes quite fast. It gave up on me just two times (and I then contributed a question of my own to help it guess the next time).

It's basically Keyhole 3 (a company that they bought a while ago) except they dropped the subscription rate so now it's totally free (there is a pro version that you can buy if you really feel like it).

The concept is very similar to NASA's World Wind but the user interface and speed are MUCH better.

And the download is only 10MB (vs. a couple hundred for NASA's program).

This totally cool program lets you zoom around a 3D representation of Earth that is constructed out of satellite photos.

It lets you fly around the globe and zoom in to just about any spot in the world. Many areas have high resolution images so that you can even see cars on the streets.

In addition to viewing 3D images of your favorites spots in the world you can also overlay different information on the map like roads, international boundaries, terrain, 3D buildings, crime statistics, schools, stadiums, restaurants, gas stations, atm machines....

It will also let you pick two spots and it'll show you the driving directions between them.

How to win more coin tosses: Always call tails. On U.S. coins, the heads side, with its big, solid portrait, weighs infinitesimally more: In the course of 10,000 tosses, the lighter tails side will come up an extra 50 or so times.

To ward off diseases, wear gloves, not a face mask. Handshakes transmit viruses seven times more effectively than sneezes do.

Chocolate screws up dogs’ hearts. It can be lethal to our canine pals—one Hershey’s bar is more than enough to kill a puppy.

You flip a steak one time-and one time only.

If you hurt yourself in the wild, clean your wounds with your urine When it leaves the body, it’s sterile, which is more than you can say of any water you’re likely to find.

How to pick a ripe watermelon: Color’s the key. Look for a melon whose dark bands are wider than its light bands. The higher the ratio of dark to light outside, the darker the color (and the sweeter the meat) inside.

How to gauge the doneness of a steak without slicing into it: Press your forefinger into it lightly, as if picking up ink from a fingerprint pad, then touch your head and compare their firmness. A well-done steak should feel as firm as your forehead; a medium steak, as firm as your chin; and a rare steak, as firm as the end of your nose.

It offers information about tons of abandonware but mainly old games (abandonware is software which is no longer being sold or supported by its copyright holder).

You can see the year that games were released, screen shots of different levels, and the best part (get this): you can download the old games!

I went over some of the categories and ran across LOTS of games that I spent hours playing.

The list of familiar games (games that I played for at least several hours each) was so long that looking back makes me feel like I spent too much time on the PC (and I can remember at least 10 more games that I used to play but didn't find there).

Check out this list of games that I used to play back in the day (and I found there):

If you're the type of person who can never have enough fonts (you guys know who you are) then I'll do my duty and feed your addiction with searchfreefonts.com.

As the name suggests, searchfreefonts.com gives you access to tons of free fonts (and some commercial ones that I didn't even bother checking out). According to their claim the site contains over 7,000 free fonts and over 12,000 commercial fonts.

You never know when you might need a Gothic font so bookmark this one...

A Sudoku is a number puzzle that is currently taking over the world (at least my neck of the world).

Websudoku lets you play tons of sudokus (sudokais, sudoks?) online, at three different game levels.

The rules of a sudoku are pretty simple: you have a grid of 9x9 and you need to place each digit from 1 to 9 into the grid so that every column, every row, and every 3x3 square must contain one of each of the nine digits.

Throughout the entire web site you won't find any buttons or other items that you'll need to click on. Instead you navigate using several different methods of moving your mouse over interface elements.

Once you play around there a bit you start to get the hang of it and learn more about the different concepts that are demonstrated there.

BTW: so you forget that you aren't supposed to click then every time you accidentally do click on something you get a "subtle" reminder that you shouldn't.

It turns out that Joel (on software) can insightfully write not only about software but also about Wall Street.

In his latest post Joel Spolsky explains about a clever scam Wall Street uses to rip off retail bond investors.

And, as usual, he does it in a way that even dumb asses like me can understand.

Here's the gist of the "scam":

You $100,000 to invest and have 3 bonds to choose from:

Bond A pays 4.15%. If you buy this bond, you'll get a check for $4150 in interest at the end of every year for 10 years. With your last check, you'll get your $100,000 back.

Bond B pays 4.5%. You'll get a check for $4500 at the end of every year for 30 years, then with your last check, you'll get your $100,000 back.

Bond C pays even more! It's 4.75%, w00t. You will get $4750 at the end of every year for 10 years, then get your original investment back, unless the government decides they want to keep your money for a little longer, in which case you'll get another 20 years of $4750 before you get your money back.

Bond C is a little more complicated so let me explain. On the tenth anniversary, the government gets to decide whether to pay you your $100K back and owe you nothing, or keep your $100K for another twenty years and keep paying you the interest. The point being, the choice is up to the government.

But either way, with Bond C, you're getting MORE interest every year, whether they decide to keep your money for 10 years or 30.

For those who didn't run into SaveToby.com yet: the guy who created the site found this cute bunny that was attacked and injured by a cat. He nursed Toby the bunny to health but unfortunately Toby will die on June 30th, 2005.

He's threatening to eat Toby unless visitors donate $50,000 to him!

The site has several bunny recipes (with some pretty graphic images), has a "Save Toby" online store, and accepts donations via PayPal.

He's currently raised $20,375.18!!

And just to balance things out (how typical for the Internet) there's even a Kill Toby site made by a group who wanna see the little bunny die.

It's been a while since we've had an online game so here's the time waster du' jour: plastic balls.

This game is a variation on the classic Breakout, aka Araknoid, aka Popcorn....only here the playing "board" is a round arena where your paddle is in the center of the screen and you need to guard your ball from falling into a hole in the middle of it.

Like its predecessors you get special bonuses (like a larger paddle, double paddles, several balls...) when you hit some of the bricks and catch the power ups that drop from them.

FeedBurner does several things (for both you the reader and me the publisher).

First of all it simplifies subscribing to the RSS feed (via various supported RSS readers) so that people who want to read the feed can do it easily (whether they use FeedDemon, MyYahoo!, Bloglines, or any other reader).

Second it gives me stats on how many people are subscribing to my RSS feed (so that I can get a feel if this is even worth my while :).

In addition it enhances the content of the feed by incorporating any feeds that I have into one feed. That way you can see any pictures that I post in addition to regular posts that I make to Guy's World.

And finally, it also saves you the trouble of having to understand the difference between different versions of RSS and Atom, there's just one link that supports all formats!

So if you want to subscribe to the new and updated feed here you have it:

I run across quite a few programs and very few of them actually make me go "wow" when I check them out.

Even less make me go "yeee haaaa, wadda wadda wooooooo!"

World Wind not only did that but made me play around with it for more than 3 hours straight (till I forced myself to go to sleep since the sun was about to rise soon and this thing called "my job" would be bugging me soon).

World Wind was recently released by NASA (that's right, the same dudes who create those cool astronaut costumes) and gives you a 3D mapping system of earth.

It lets you spin the globe around, select a spot, and zoom in and see satellite photos of any spot on earth (similar to Google's Keyhole, but much better and free).

It also uses elevation data to show you the landscape in 3D and displays place names and borders!

The man who has amnesia and had been wandering around for 3 and a half months found out his identity after he logged on to the Internet and saw a "missing" picture of himself.

He had left his wallet at home so he had no clue of his true identity. With the help of a psychiatrist and a priest, he logged onto the internet and went searching for information on himself, only to discover that he had been missing for months.

A mnemonic device is a sentence that helps us to memorize a string of words. For example, music students use "Every Good Boy Does Fine" to remember the order of notes on the treble clef. (E, G, B, D, F). Math students use "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" to remember the order of arithmetic operations (Parentheses, Exponent, Multiply, Divide, Add, Subtract.).

So if you have a list of items that you need to remember the Mnemonicizer will help you create a sentence that is easy to remember.

The idea is cool but the user interface needs some work.

It's quite confusing how to use the Mnemonicizer (and it's mostly manual).